


Backdraft

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Burn Notice
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 09:09:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-episode fic for 2x11, <i>Hot Spot</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backdraft

_backdraft: (noun) an explosive surge in a fire produced by the sudden mixing of air with other combustible gases_

  
  


_When you're a young spy you think the worst thing that can happen to you is getting captured. You'd rather die than get captured—it’s been blitzed into your brain that it's better to die than to ever give up information. But when you've been in the business for a while, you realize your death or capture is secondary to your enemy getting their hands on someone you care about. So you make sure you don't care about anyone, because that's easier than hiding those you do care about from the sharks._

The day Michael believed Fiona was dead, there wasn’t anyone to blame—it was no one's fault; no one had targeted her because of him. She simply hadn't waited for him to show up to start looking around for clues, and by the time he’d gotten there the house had been engulfed in flames.

Michael had known two things as he struggled against the firemen who held him back: no one could have survived the inferno raging before his eyes, and Fi was not picking up her cell phone.

The one thing he’d tried so hard to make sure never happened, despite her desire to be in the thick of things, and her usefulness in almost any situation, and his constant emotional distance had happened anyway. She was dead, and he suddenly knew what was worse than not being with Fi. It was _the world being without Fi._

The house must have been rigged with some kind of booby trap, and she’d been caught in it and disappeared from his life in a flash of light. His only hope was that somehow it had not been as terrifying for her—facing death—as it was for him now, facing life without her.

He hadn’t been the target; that fire could have been meant for Carla. He liked to think that was the truth, because he hated that bitch, and he hoped whoever had tried to kill him to screw her over would eventually succeed—not in killing him, but in screwing her over.

Because Fiona had questioned why he would try to find the person for Carla who had tried to kill him, and it had gotten the only woman he’d ever loved burnt to a crisp. He imagined fifteen different ways to kill and torture Carla as he drove home through the pouring rain—rain that couldn’t extinguish the flames he still saw when he closed his eyes. He, the spy who tried to never kill anyone, and if he did shoot someone at close range, always went for the meaty part of the shoulder because it would cause the least amount of damage.

He, Michael Westen, planned revenge of the unjust—a life for a life, one that could never equal the other, but was the only thing he could imagine that might take away the numb hollowness inside his chest.

The rain soaked through his gray t-shirt and his jeans, his steps slow and lifeless as he plodded up the stairs to his apartment. God, if he’d only died when the door blew off here just a week earlier, she might still be alive.

If only he’d never allowed her to be involved in any of the shit he’d been doing since he’d been looking for who was responsible for burning him.

If only he’d never fallen in love with her in Dublin in the first place.

If only they’d never met.

The light in the kitchen was on, his eyes picked that up peripherally as he shut the door, and then her voice, as if out of his dreams, came to him. As if she weren’t dead, as if she hadn’t been in so much danger that he’d been certain he would never see her again.

But that was Fiona, to a tee. Always surprising him, never doing what she was supposed to, never getting out of his way, or his life, or his heart so he could do what needed to be done.

He didn’t think about it, he just eliminated the space between them. Her eyes were soft with surprise, and then dark with concern, as she understood what he had believed for almost an hour—that he would never have the opportunity to touch her ever again.

So he glutted himself on her lips, and her skin, the delicate wiriness of her body fooling him once more into thinking he needed to be careful with her; but when he couldn’t be gentle, and when his control slipped through his fingers, she took him, and held him, demanding as much as she gave, showing him all the ways he could never erase her from his life no matter what his training was, or what the circumstances were, because she was his perfect match.

She was the one who had more power over him than all the enemies he’d accumulated all over the world, and if Carla ever truly understood that, being burned figuratively would never compare to the literal backdraft.


End file.
